Dwelling Narrow: Affordable Home Ownership in the City

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the rising cost of home ownership in New Zealand has led to the crushing of our quarter acre kiwi dream, and New Zealand’s housing stock has been filled with large numbers of damp, cold, leaky homes¹. Adding the Christchurch earthquake and Auckland housing shortfall, the situation is bleak for today’s first home buyers².

Recent research has revealed that the rising cost of land is significantly influencing unaffordability³. Traditionally this has been met with either greenfield developments at the city fringe, or intensification of existing suburbs. Christchurch’s flat terrain has favoured fringe developments, contributing to the city’s sprawl.

Christchurch’s suburban nature has resulted in a dominant detached single-storey housing typology, even at the CBD perimeter. This typology is often wasteful of land with setbacks and larger dwelling footprints. Christchurch City Council is advocating intensification of the city’s empty core, providing an opportunity to discuss alternative housing types⁴.

Narrow, and row housing’s long history of international success in affordability and efficient land-use provides an opportunity to explore affordable architectural expression for Christchurch⁵. The vibrant, mixed-use, urban areas that narrow houses encourage, reduce transport use and are essentially anti-sprawl.

An iterative design methodology explored width, length, height, orientation, and density. It found that the reduced driveway area, setbacks, interior walls and circulation space in narrow houses, contributed to their efficiency. Even at high densities, backyards, individuality, light, architectural expression, and self-governance were still possible with a narrow house. Affordability measures included reduced land area, providing additional sources of income (space for boarders/ shops/ offices to let) and repetition.

¹ Bell and Southcombe, Kiwi Prefab, 141; Mitchell, The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise. ² Bell and Southcombe, Kiwi Prefab, 141. ³ Page, “What’s Behind Rising Prices?” 49. ⁴ New Zealand Government and Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, Christchurch Central Recovery Plan, 81. ⁵ Friedman, Narrow Houses, 178.